I am responding to Jonathan Wright’s May 25 guest column. I agree with him, and particularly his parting comment about his impatience with those “whose buildings and properties remain empty for months and years at a time.”
He rightly said: “landlords have potential customers with the kinds of startup opportunities that remade Northampton half a century ago, just not perhaps at the premium prices.”
Appropriate state and city officials should investigate what motivates several landlords in Northampton to allow prime properties to remain vacant for years. How is it that this could possibly be a sound financial decision? On the surface, it appears it could not be.
But what otherwise would be the incentive? Something seems askew. If, in the most gratuitous of scenarios, there are laws creating financial incentives that encourage such behavior, those laws should be changed. Much of our community depends on it.
Perhaps these landlords could be more forthcoming with our community and help us to better understand how it is that they benefit from leaving prime properties vacant while our community suffers, and why they cannot do more to put those properties to good use.
It’s time to lift the curtain and better understand this situation. The status quo is unacceptable.
Timothy Jones
Northampton